Dispassionate Passions

c© Peter King, in Reason and Emotion in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy

DISPASSIONATE PASSIONS

I want to trace the Hellenistic origins and mediæval career of the idea thatthere can be emotions that do not have the disagreeable baggage with whichordinary emotions travel — emotions that are neither turbulent nor disruptive,emotions that lack any somatic component, emotions that are the product ofreason rather than opposed to it: in a word, dispassionate passions of the soul.The mediæval motivation behind the idea of dispassionate passions is notfar to seek. It is a fundamental article of faith that immaterial beings suchas God and His angels, as well as postmortem human souls, enjoy bodilessbliss in Heaven as the highest state of which they are capable. Hence thetransports of delight experienced there must be independent of the body;they are the final fulfillment of rational nature, not its annulment, and theycontribute to a stable and settled state of eternal blessedness. Yet while themediæval motivation for adopting dispassionate passions seems clear, suchreasons of faith do not apply to the Stoics. More pressing, the doctrine itselfstands in need of clarification. How could passions be dispassionate, emotionsunemotional, feelings unfelt?

Our sources for early and middle Stoicism permit us to have a clear viewof the main outlines of the doctrine of dispassionate passions in the Hellenis-tic period, though not about the motivation behind it, despite its being one ofthe aspects of Stoicism heavily criticized in Antiquity (§). Mediæval philoso-phers tried to transplant the doctrine of dispassionate passions from its Stoicorigins to different philosophical environments: Augustine into Platonism(§), Aquinas into Aristotelianism (§).

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The Stoic doctrine of dispassionate passions has three constituent parts:(a) the account of the passions, π�θη; (b) the view that the Sage is passionless,�παθ ; (c ) the further view that the Sage experiences εÎπ�θειαι, literally‘goodpassions’. The paradox is apparent, since (b) should entail that (c ) isimpossible, or, if not impossible, then to the extent that the εÎπ�θειαι of (c )fall under (a) they must be drained of their affective content by (b), renderingthem no more than the passionless passions of the Sage. Yet the Stoics were

∗ All translations are mine.

– 1 –

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not averse to couching their theories in paradoxes. A closer look at (a)–(c )should tell us whether the ‘paradox’ of dispassionate passions is real or merelyapparent.

Unfortunately, a closer look at (a) is not straightforward, for our sourcesare fragmentary and they do not always clearly agree. Diogenes Lærtius in-troduces his discussion of the Stoic theory of the passions as follows:1

Turmoil, extending to the rational faculty, arises from falsehoods; fromit come many passions and causes of instability. According to Zeno, apassion is an irrational and unnatural motion of the soul, or an excessiveimpulse. . . They hold the passions to be judgments, as Chrysippus says.

The broad brushstrokes in this passage link the acceptance or endorsementof falsehoods to mental upheaval, disruptive to the point of affecting ratio-nal thought; passions are an effect of such an upheaval, if not the upheavalitself, and in their turn bring about instability — most likely unsteady or un-reliable reasoning in the case of human beings, though that is not explicit.The causal connections described here, though their nature is not spelled out,are clear: human passions are produced by accepting falsehoods, and theycontribute to psychological disequilibrium.2 What passions themselves are,however, is unclear. Zeno seems to identify the passions with psychological‘motion’ or turmoil, perhaps arising from or supervening upon falsehoods insome way, whereas Chrysippus explicitly declares passions to be judgments.Yet even whether there is disagreement is itself unclear. In his lost treatiseΠερÈ π�θÀν, Chrysippus is said to have offered an interpretation and anal-ysis of Zeno’s remarks3 as merely “giving a sketch” (Íπογρ�φει) of the pas-

1 Diogenes Lærtius, uit. .: âk dà tÀn yeudÀn âpig�nesqai t�n diastrof�n âpÈ t�ndi�noian, �f' ©j poll� p�qh blast�nein kaÈ �katastas�aj aÒtia. êsti dà aÎtä täp�qoj kat� Z nwna � �logoj kaÈ par� fÔsin yux¨j k�nhsij £ årm� pleon�zousa. . .dokeØ d' aÎtoØj t� p�qh kr�seij eÚnai, kaq� fhsi XrÔsippoj. Compare the parallelintroductory remarks in Cicero, tusc. ..: Est igitur Zenonis haec definitio, utperturbatio sit, quod p�qoj ille dicit, auersa a recta ratione contra naturam animicommotio. Quidam breuius perturbationem esse appetitum uehementiorem. . . ,slightly amplified at ... See also Stobaeus, ecl. (.–), and Chrysippusap. Galen, plac. ...

2 See B. Inwood and P. Donini, “Stoic ethics” in K. Algra, J. Barnes, J. Mansfeld, andM. Schofield (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge Uni-versity Press –): “What distinguishes the Stoic theory most clearly isthe conviction that passions are causally dependent on intellectual mistakes aboutvalues, that in principle one eliminates passions and the underlying psychologicalinstability by correcting one’s beliefs” ().

3 Galen, plac. .., .., .., and ... For discussion see R. Sorabji, Emotionand Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation (Oxford University

c© Peter King, in Reason and Emotion in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy (OUP 2011)

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sions — a sketch presumably capable of being further elaborated by providinga more thorough account, which is what Chrysippus did. For the next sev-eral centuries, the first and second founders of Stoicism were understood tooffer complementary rather than competing views: passions involve on theone hand psychological ‘motion’ as emphasized by Zeno, and on the otherhand a cognitive component as emphasized by Chrysippus. On the Zenon-ian psychological side, when experiencing passions the soul is said to undergo‘contraction’ (συστολ = contractio) and ‘expansion’ (êπαρσι = elatio), as wellas ‘swelling’, ‘stretching’, ‘shrinking’, and a variety of other related states.4 Onthe Chrysippean cognitive side, the agent holds that something good or evilis present or anticipated, and further that it is appropriate to react to the cir-cumstances in a particular way — the former usually construed as a belief (δìcα = opinio) about something that appears good or evil,5 the latter a judge-ment (κρÐσι = iudicium), either implicit or explicit. Their two approachesare reported together by Pseudo-Andronicus:6

Press ) –, and T. Tieleman, Chrysippus’ On Affections: Reconstruction andInterpretation (Leiden: Brill ) –.

4 The Stoics held that the mind (really the �gemonikìn) is material, so this Zenon-ian terminology may be more than metaphor: changes in mental states should bereflected in changes in material states, however the two may be correlated. Notethat these changes are not the somatic changes usually associated with passions:the type of physiological responses characteristic of anger — faster respiration, in-crease in heartbeat, and so on — are not the ‘expansion’ or ‘swelling’ mentionedhere, though presumably there is a causal link from the psychological state to thesomatic effects. See Chrysippus ap. Galen, plac. .. and ..–.

5 There are complexities here that require delicate handling. The belief might beabout a state of affairs or be an evaluation of a state of affairs; in either case itmay involve or bring about assent, which is required for a judgment, though theassent need not take the form of a judgment: for various intricacies see B. Inwood,Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism (Oxford University Press ) –;M. Frede, “The Stoic doctrine of the affections of the soul” in M. Schofield andG. Striker (Eds.), The Norms of Nature (Cambridge University Press ) –;Sorabjii, Emotions and Peace of Mind Part ; T. Brennan, “Stoic moral psychology”in B. Inwood (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics (Cambridge UniversityPress ) –; M. Graver, Stoicism and Emotion (University of Chicago Press).

6 Pseudo-Andronicus, PerÈ paqÀn (SVF .): lÔph màn oÞn âstin �logoj sustol ; £dì a prìsfatoj kakoÜ parous�aj, âf' Áú oÒontai deØn sustèllesqai. fìboj dà �logojêkklisij; £ fug� �pä prosdokwmènou deinoÜ. âpiqum�a dà �logoj îre ij; £ d�w ij pros-dokwmènou �gaqoÜ. �don� dà �logoj êparsij; £ dì a prìsfatoj �gaqoÜ parous�aj,âf' Áú oÒontai deØn âpa�resqai. See also Stobaeus, ecl. ..– (perhaps derivedfrom Arius Didymus); Diogenes Lærtius, uit. .–; and especially Cicero,tusc. ..– (cfr. ..– and ..–), the main source for Augustine, dis-


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Distress is an irrational contraction, namely the fresh7 opinion of the pres-ence of something evil about which people think they should undergo acontraction. Fear is an irrational shrinking away, namely avoidance of ananticipated danger. Desire is an irrational stretching forth, namely pur-suit of an anticipated good. Delight is an irrational expansion, namelythe fresh opinion of the presence of something good about which peoplethink they should undergo an expansion.

Pseudo-Andronicus does not choose these passions at random. For the Stoicsthese four passions — distress (λÔπη = aegritudo), fear (φìβο = metus), desire(âπιθυµÐα = libido or alternatively appetitus or cupiditas), delight (�δον =laetitia) — are the most generic kinds of passions, the categories under whichall others may be ranged.8 They are traditionally presented in a table, basedon the cross-cutting distinctions good/evil and present/future, as follows:

present future

good delight desireevil distress fear

Traditional it may be, but the table does not include the psychological state(associated with Zeno) or the judgment of appropriateness (the second cog-nitive component associated with Chrysippus). A pity, for the most strikingfeature of the presentation of Pseudo-Andronicus is that the psychologicalstate and the cognitive components are listed side-by-side without any ap-parent consciousness of tension: the psychological expansion of delight —think of feeling elated, or buoyant, or even ‘expansive’ — simply is the livelyawareness of an apparent good to whose possession such a reaction is thought

cussed in §.7 ‘Fresh’ (prìsfatoj = recens): “not determined by the clock or the calendar” (In-

wood, Ethics and Human Action 48), but a sign of its liveliness to the agent — seeCicero, tusc. ...

8 The Stoics deliberately pressed ordinary language into philosophical usages, andclaimed to offer senses that were extensions of ordinary meanings but continuouswith them. Such is the case here: lÔph and �don are the ordinary Greek words forpain and pleasure respectively, but the Stoics use them in extended ways so thatthese translations would be misleading. The sense of ‘pain’ is that in which youcan be pained at the good fortunes of your rivals, which has nothing to do withthe jabs and stabs beloved of contemporary philosophy. Likewise the ‘pleasure’in question is like the pleasures of good conversation, not like a sensual massage.Better to use words that do not have such misleading connotations: ‘distress’ and‘delight’.


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proper.9 Mistakenly, of course; the passions are not rational responses to theircircumstances,10 or at any rate their motivating powers are ‘excessive’ (åρµ�πλεον�ζουσα). These formulae arguably amount to the same thing: passion-ate impulses exceed the control of reason, and so prompt behaviour that isnot reasonable.

The delicate balance among the parts of the Stoic theory of passions wasupset by Posidonius, who, it seems, wanted to adopt a platonic division ofthe soul into rational and irrational parts, ascribing passions to the latter; hiscriticism of the traditional Stoic account is rehashed with relish and at lengthby Galen, and to a lesser extent by Plutarch, who make use of it to reject Sto-icism altogether. Yet while their purposes are clearly polemical, often settingZeno against Chrysippus, and their reports untrustworthy, the philosophicalpoints they raise are worth pressing. Is passion a psychological state? Is itcognitive? If so, is it a belief, or a judgment, or something compounded ofthese? What is the connection between psychological states and cognitivefactors? Between either of these and somatic manifestations? How are theseelements excessive, at variance with reason, constitutive of turmoil, the prod-uct of falsehood? Good questions all, to which the earlier Stoic confidencethat the various parts of their theory all fit together might seem philosophi-cally naıve. The later Stoics address these questions, usually in the form ofwhat Zeno and Chrysippus ‘really’ said, or meant, in their writings, a dialec-tical strategy that need not countenance any real disagreement or philosoph-ical problem. To the extent there was consensus, later Stoics maintained thatChrysippus explained and elaborated Zeno’s doctrines, which, after all, were

9 Stoic passions are therefore response-dependent evaluative concepts, much assome contemporary philosophers have argued about the emotions generally; seefor example A. Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Oxford University Press );J. D’Arms and D. Jacobson, “Expressivism, morality, and the emotions” in Ethics: –.

10 The sense in which a passion is ‘not rational’ (�logoj) is disputed, as indeed iswhether there is a dispute here. Zeno is said to have held that passion does notconform (�peiqhj = non obtemperans) to reason, presumably keeping the agent fromfulfilling the injunction to live in accordance with nature, t¨ù fÔsei z¨n (Stobaeusecl. .. and Cicero off. .). Chrysippus, perhaps by contrast, catalogues thekind of errors that could be made — reasoning badly, making a mistake, overlook-ing something, and the like (Galen plac. .., .., ..–, ..). Sorabji,Emotion and Peace of Mind – holds there to be genuine and deep disagreementhere. By contrast, Inwood, Ethics and Human Action – argues that an agentfails to conform to (right) reason precisely by the kinds of epistemic failures listedby Chrysippus.


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often formulated orally rather than written down in detailed fashion.11

Given the ancient controversy, it might seem presumptuous to try to settlenow what wasn’t settled then. Yet certain features of the Stoic theory areclear. First, the psychological states described by Zeno and elaborated byothers, namely the expansions and contractions of the soul, are the (purelymental) ‘feelings’ associated with the passions. This fits with ordinary usage:we have sinking feelings, we may be expansive, we feel the bite of conscience.These states are to be sharply distinguished from the somatic manifestationsassociated with the passions: the queasy stomach and flop sweat associatedwith stage fright are distinct from the internal feeling of shrinking away fromthe spotlight. Second, for the Stoics the passions are, or at least essentiallyinvolve, cognitive components; they are more than mere feelings. Whetherthe cause of the passions or part of their definition, beliefs and judgmentsare central to the Stoic analysis. Hence it is wrong to identify the passionswith visceral reactions, be they somatic or purely psychological.12 Third, allStoics agree in thinking that passions fail to conform to reason, whatever theexplanation for the failure may be. (There may be different causes in differentcases.) This is more than the claim that there are norms of propriety for thepassions, criteria with which to assess the reasonableness of an emotionalresponse to a given set of circumstances, which they might, in principle, failto satisfy. To put it bluntly, for the Stoics there are no circumstances in whichpassions are rational. The passions are, instead, failures of reason.

This last point leads to another on which all Stoics seem to be united,namely that the only way to avoid the failings of the passions is to extirpatethem altogether — the goal of passionlessness, �π�θεια.13 This deliberately

11 Galen, plac. ..: tÀn paqÀn Ípì te Z nwnoj eÊrhmènoi kaÈ präj toÜ Xrus�ppougegrammènoi.12 Such visceral reactions are taken into account by the (perhaps middle) Stoic the-

ory of ‘pre-passions’ (propaqeiai) clearly attested by Epictetus ap. Aulus Gellius,noct. ..– (there attributed to Zeno and Chrysippus as the founders, con-ditores), and by Seneca, ep. . and de ira ..–..; Cicero identifies themwith Zenonian psychological states in the absence of the relevant Chrysippeanjudgment, tusc. ..: Hoc detracto [sc. iudicio], quod totum est uoluntarium,aegritudo erit sublata illa maerens, morsus tamen et contractiunculae quaedamanimi relinquentur. — The same analysis can be brought into play for non-humananimals, who cannot, strictly speaking, have passions, a claim Posidonius stronglyobjected to: see Galen, plac. .. and ..–. At best, non-human animals are‘pre-emotional’, capable of states that are merely analogous to human emotions,much the same way they have only rudimentary language or reasoning abilities.

13 Diogenes Lærtius, uit. .: fasÈ dà kaÈ �paq¨ eÚnai tän sofìn, di� tä �nèmptwtoneÚnai.c© Peter King, in Reason and Emotion in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy (OUP 2011)

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constrasts with the strategy of moderating the passions, µετριοπ�θεια, en-dorsed by Platonists and Peripatetics. Seneca, at the start of one of his lettersto Lucullus, expresses the Stoic position sharply:14

The question is often raised whether it is best to have moderate passionsor no passions. We get rid of them; the Peripatetics regulate them. For mypart, I do not see how any moderateness of a disease could be wholesomeor useful.

A passion is literally a disease (νìσο).15 This is more than a rhetoricalmetaphor. The passions are excessive impulses contrary to nature, disordersof the whole human personality (�γεµονικìν); the condition they induce is— note the etymology — pathological. If so, Seneca is surely correct to see no‘moderate’ amount of a disease to be healthy; health at a minimum demandsthe absence of disease. Likewise mental health.

The Stoics offer a variety of therapeutic techniques to assist in the quest toattain �π�θεια, ranging from slogans and sayings to repeat to oneself (in thevein of Epicurus), to behavioural modification, to moral training, to subtleargumentation.16 Some of the exercises are directed towards strengtheningthe mind, others to counteracting the passions directly, but the goal of all ofthe exercises is to become ‘passionless’.

Even in Antiquity there was confusion over the meaning of �π�θεια andwhether it should be counted as a legitimate ideal.17 It was often (and notmerely polemically) understood as a deliberate repression of emotions, or a

14 Seneca, ep. .: Utrum satius sit modicos habere affectus an nullos saepe quae-situm est. Nostri illos expellunt, Peripatetici temperant. Ego non uideo quomodosalubris esse aut utilis possit ulla mediocritas morbi.

15 Cicero even proposes morbus as a literal translation of p�qoj, though in the endhe adopts ‘disturbance’ (perturbatio), in which he is later followed by Augustine;fin. ..: Nec uero perturbationes animorum, quae uitam insipientium miseramacerbamque reddunt, quas Graeci p�qh appellant? poteram ego uerbum ipsuminterpretans morbos appellare, sed non conueniret ad omnia. . . See also tusc. ..and ...

16 See M. Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics(Princeton University Press ) Chapters – (especially Chapter ), Sorabji,Emotion and Peace of Mind Part ; and Tieleman, Chrysippus Chapter for a surveyof Stoic therapies. Most notorious is Epictetus’s advice to say to yourself as youkiss your loved ones that one day they will die, in order to become sufficientlyaccustomed to the idea that you can bear its coming to pass: ench. .

17 Even among Stoics! Panaetius is reported to have rejected “insensibility and pas-sionlessness” (Aulus Gellius, noct. ..: �nalghs�a enim atque �p�qeia). Thepoint is directly addressed in Diogenes Lærtius, uit. ..


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wooden insensitivity, or an inhuman denial.18 Yet it is none of these. It isneither repression nor denial, since in each of these cases the agent still hasthe passions but tries to avoid the fact. Nor is it insensitivity. An agent whobecomes insensitive or ‘numb’ does not experience passions, it is true, but in away that misses the mark. Passions are irrational responses to circumstances;the goal is not to get rid of all responses, which would throw out the baby withthe bathwater, but to rid oneself of irrational responses and have instead onlyrational responses to circumstances — which by definition are not passions.Yet the Stoic goal is feasible only if rational responses are possible, so that theagent replaces the passions with the correct responses.

Are there such rational responses?The Stoic doctrine of εÎπ�θειαι (constantia) describes how the wise person

ought to respond to circumstances that would, among the non-wise, elicit anemotional reaction.19 The responses of the wise person take three forms, weare told, each of which is εÖλογον rather than �λογον, rational rather thanirrational, being the offspring of virtue:20

[The Stoics] say that there are three εÎπ�θειαι: elation, caution, wishing.They declare that the opposite of delight is elation, being a rational expan-sion; the opposite of fear is caution, being a rational shrinking away. Forthe wise man will not be afraid in any way, but he will be cautious. Theydeclare that the opposite of desire is wishing, being a rational stretching

18 See T. Irwin, “Stoic inhumanity” in J. Sihvola and T. Engberg-Pedersen (Eds.),The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer ). Misreadings aside,�p�qeia was criticized for being unattainable by mere mortals, a claim given sup-port by the Stoic insistence that in this regard the Sage is “godlike” (Qe�ouj, Dio-genes Lærtius, uit. .) — a theme taken up by Plotinus, enn. .., and there-after by Augustine, as described in §.

19 I take the eÎp�qeiai to be central to Stoic thought from its origins. For its likelyorigins with Chrysippus, and scholarly disagreement with that claim, see the ad-mirably succinct survey in Inwood, Ethics and Human Action n. . Its cen-trality is downplayed in Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind –, who calls them“largely an ideal” — true enough, but so is the Stoic Sage, whose centrality and im-portance are undeniable. For their connection with passionlessness, Inwood offersthe memorable slogan ‘ap�qeia is eÎp�qeia’ ().

20 Diogenes Lærtius, uit. .: eÚnai dà eÎpaqèiaj fasÈ treØj, xar�n, eÎl�beian, boÔlh-sin. kaÈ t�n màn xar�n ânant�an fasÈn eÚnai t¨ù �don¨ù, oÞsan eÖlogon êparsin; t�nd'eÎl�beian tÀú fìbwú, oÞsan eÖlogon êkklisin. fobhq sesqai màn g�r tän sofänoÎdamÀj, eÎlabhq sesqai dè. t¨ù d' âpiqum�aø ânant�an fasÈn eÚnai t�n boÔlhsin, oÞsaneÖlogon îre in. The same trio are given in Pseudo-Andronicus, PerÈ paqÀn §(SVF .), and Cicero, tusc. ..–. See the references in Inwood cited inthe preceding note for other candidates for eÎp�qeiai. For the link to virtue, seeDiogenes Lærtius, uit. ..


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forth.Each of the three εÎπ�θειαι is the counterpart to one of the basic passions,described in terms of its psychological states: elation (χαρ� = gaudium) is therational version of delight; caution (εÎλ�βεια = cautio) the rational versionof fear; wishing (βοÔλησι = uoluntas) the rational version of desire. Likethe basic passions, they are the most generic forms under which subtypes areranged, and they too may be presented in a table:

present future

good elation wishingevil • caution

There is no counterpart to distress because the soul has no rational responseto the presence of a genuine evil; the Stoic Sage accepts it as part of Fate andis not depressed by it — there is no rational ‘contraction’, much less ‘expan-sion’ or ‘shrinking’ or the like, of the soul.21 The Sage is neither pleased nordispleased at something evil, though of course preferring that it not be so.

The most striking fact about the Stoic εÎπ�θειαι is not the absence of acounterpart to distress. It is rather that there is no discussion of an associatedcognitive component, in this case inerrant judgment(s), unlike the case ofthe passions. The reason is not far to seek. To get things right, as the StoicSage does, is not a matter of any single judgment or cognitive attitude, butto have a life in which beliefs, judgments, dispositions, actions, etc. are all inaccordance with nature: τ¨ù φÔσει ζ¨ν.22 An automobile may have a singlepoint of failure, so that it won’t run because of a faulty alternator. But to runsmoothly, all its parts have to be in good working condition and mesh wellwith the rest. So too with the good life, the life of the Sage, in which theεÎπ�θειαι have their proper place as concomitants of virtuous — which is tosay rational — action.

21 J. Rist, Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge University Press ) –: “It would havebeen unnecessarily paradoxical, not to say foolish, of the Stoics to argue that any[distress] is per se even a preferred state. . . Nor, obviously, can [distress] be anykind of natural accompaniment of virtuous activity.”

22 A point made well by Seneca, ep. .: Actio recta non erit nisi recta fuerit uol-untas; ab hac enim est actio. Rursus uoluntas non erit recta nisi habitus animirectus fuerit; ab hoc enim est uoluntas. Habitus porro animi non erit in optimonisi totius uitae leges perceperit et quid de quoque iudicandum sit exegerit, nisires ad uerum redegerit. Non contingit tranquillitas nisi immutabile certumque iu-dicium adeptis: caeteri decidunt subinde et reponuntur et inter missa appetitaquealternis fluctuantur.


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We are now in a position to return to the question with which we beganthis section. Is the Stoic position on dispassionate passions paradoxical? Moreexactly: Are the Stoic εÎπ�θειαι instances of dispassionate passions?

The Stoics deny that they are: εÎπ�θειαι differ from passions precisely innot being irrational, which is why the Stoic goal can be described as �π�θεια.

We might be tempted to treat this as merely a verbal point. Surely theelation felt by the Sage is as much an emotion as the delight felt by the Fool;the Fool may make a mistake about whether something is good, but surely his(mistaken) emotion of delight is no different in kind from the Sage’s (correct)emotion of elation. The psychological state involved in each is describedin the same terms as an ‘expansion’ of the soul. From the point of viewof ‘feelings’ delight and elation may be indistinguishable. For all the Stoicinsistence that passions are irrational, their account of εÎπ�θειαι shows thatthe difference is extrinsic to the emotion. False beliefs do not systematicallydiffer from true beliefs; the same should hold for ‘false’ emotions (passions)and ‘true’ emotions (εÎπ�θειαι).

This line of objection treats emotions as being largely a matter of thepsychological states (the ‘feelings’) that the agent experiences. There is some-thing to it, but it overstates the case. Emotions, as the Stoics insist, are morethan mere feelings; they are bound up with cognition, sensitive to attitudesand beliefs, permeable by reasons and arguments. Likewise, Stoic passionsare not merely engendered by or targeted at falsehoods: they are ‘excessive’,the sort of psychological state that results from rushing to judgment, leapingto conclusions, not taking the time to weigh and balance evidence, and so on.Above all they are hasty, rather than measured, responses to their circum-stances. Indeed, delight and elation may differ by no more than this. But thatis no small difference. The Fool who does not pause to consider alternativesmay yet leap to the correct conclusion, which he hastily believes to be true;the Sage, who does consider the alternatives, arrives at the same result, andyet has knowledge rather than mere belief once he arrives. Passions are im-moderate; εÎπ�θειαι are not. The latter are ‘dispassionate’ precisely in notbeing passionately held or felt.

For all that, there is something of false advertisement about the Stoicclaim that the Sage is passionless. For the Sage does have affective responsesto situations, as does the Fool; to mark the difference between them as a mat-ter of being passionate or passionless doesn’t quite hit the target. It is a sub-stantive thesis that in order to live rightly the Sage will have to keep ordinaryemotional responses at arm’s length, and to insist on the ‘excessive’ characterof ordinary emotional responses only goes half the distance: we need an ar-


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gument that Stoic rationality entails a form of emotional detachment,23 whichseems to fly in the face of the doctrine of ‘goodpassions’ (εÎπ�θειαι). In mostsituations the Sage will not react as the Fool does. But that is not to say theSage does not have emotions in a perfectly straightforward sense, only thathis values have become systematically different from those of others.

The Stoic position, then, is philosophically suspect. Working through thedetailed analyses of the passions, it is not clear that passionlessness is at allincompatible with what we would call emotion. (Above and beyond anydisagreement with the Stoic cognitivist approach, that is.) Yet even if theStoics did not in the end put forward a philosophically adequate account ofdispassionate passions, they certainly were taken to have done so, and sobequeathed to philosophical posterity the not entirely compatible ideals of�π�θεια and εÎπ�θειαι.

. AUGUSTINE

Augustine discusses the Stoic theory of passions in his De ciuitate Deitwice, in Book .– and throughout Book . He has a clear working knowl-edge of late Roman Stoicism, derived primarily from Cicero but also fromSeneca, Aulus Gellius, and other Latin sources:24 he sketches the generalStoic account of the passions (ciu. .), the four basic passions (.), the goalof �π�θεια (.), and the εÎπ�θειαι (.). Augustine’s knowledge of Sto-icism is neither scholarly nor technical, but it is enough to convince him toreject their account of the passions — and as Augustine went, so went theMiddle Ages.

Augustine begins by endorsing Cicero’s claim that the Stoic account ofthe good differs from the Platonist and Peripatetic accounts merely in theirterminology of ‘goods’ and ‘indifferents’ and ‘preferred’ (ciu. .).25 He citesan anecdote about a Stoic reacting badly to dangers at sea to prove that eventhe Sage experiences passions.26

23 See J. Rist, “The Stoic concept of detachment” in J. Rist (Ed.), The Stoics (Universityof California Press ) –.

24 For Augustine’s knowledge and use of classical literature, see M. Testard, Saint Au-gustin et Ciceron (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes ), and H. Hagendahl, Augustineand the Latin Classics (Goteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis ).

25 Cicero, fin. .. et passim; see also tusc. ..–.26 Augustine takes the anecdote from Aulus Gellius, noct. ., paraphrasing Epicte-

tus; Augustine cites it again in hept. . to prove the same point. But Augustineis mistaken. The original anecdote seems to have concerned not the passions butthe ‘prepassions’ and to have been garbled by Gellius in transmission: the details


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More to the point, Augustine holds that the Stoics are wrong about thepassions. Some of their views are objectionable: counting mercy as a pas-sion to be extirpated (.), for instance, and the potential encouragement ofinsensitivity through the ideal of �π�θεια (.). But his disagreement runsdeeper. For one thing, Scripture bids us to feel passions:27 to love our ene-mies, to fear God, to be angry at sinners, to be distressed when faced withtemptation. Even Jesus wept: et lacrimatus est Iesus ( jn. :). His emotionwas not feigned, but a function of his assumption of human nature; as such,Jesus clearly felt emotion (particularly at the Passion), and as simultaneouslydivine it follows that His experience of the several emotions He felt was al-together fitting and appropriate.28 These Biblical references clinch the pointfor Augustine. We might hope for argument.

We get it when Augustine carries his battle into the Stoic camp in ciu. .First, Augustine radically reduces the four basic Stoic passions to forms ofwilling (uoluntas):29

What matters is what a man’s willing is like. For if it is perverse, he isgoing to have perverse emotions; if on the other hand it is upright, theyare going to be not only blameless but even praiseworthy. Willing is inthem all — or rather, they are all nothing other than kinds of willing. What

are untangled in R. Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind –; see also S. Byers,“Augustine and the cognitive cause of Stoic ‘preliminary passions’ (propatheiai )” inJournal of the History of Philosophy (): –.

27 A claim initially made at ciu. . and reiterated with citations at ..28 Augustine, ciu. .: Quam ob rem etiam ipse Dominus in forma serui agere uitam

dignatus humanam, sed nullum habens omnino peccatum adhibuit eas, ubi ad-hibendas esse iudicauit. Neque enim, in quo uerum erat hominis corpus et uerushominis animus, falsus erat humanus affectus. — See also Augustine’s discussionof Christ’s fear of death in in Ioh. eu. .–, and the analysis in G. O’Daly andA. Zumkellar, “Affectus (passio, perturbatio)” in C. Meyer (Ed.), Augustinus-LexikonVol. (Basel/Stuttgart: Schwabe & Co. A.G. B–B), especially A–A.

29 Augustine, ciu. .: Interest autem qualis sit uoluntas hominis; quia si peruersaest, peruersos habebit hos motus; si autem recta est, non solum inculpabiles,uerum etiam laudabiles erunt. Voluntas est quippe in omnibus; immo omnes ni-hil aliud quam uoluntates sunt. Nam quid est cupiditas et laetitia nisi uoluntas ineorum consensione quae uolumus? Et quid est metus atque tristitia nisi uoluntasin dissensione ab his quae nolumus? Sed cum consentimus appetendo ea quaeuolumus, cupiditas; cum autem consentimus fruendo his quae uolumus, laetitiauocatur. Itemque cum dissentimus ab eo quod accidere nolumus, talis uoluntasmetus est; cum autem dissentimus ab eo quod nolentibus accidit, talis uoluntastristitia est. Et omnino pro uarietate rerum, quae appetuntur atque fugiuntur, si-cut allicitur uel offenditur uoluntas hominis, ita in hos uel illos affectus mutatur etuertitur.


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is desire and delight but willing with consent the things we will for? Whatis fear and distress but willing in dissent from the things we will against?Rather, when we consent in pursuing the things we will for, it is calleddesire; when we consent in enjoying the things we will, it is called delight.And again, when we dissent from what we will against happening, suchwilling is called fear; when we dissent from what happens to us who willagainst it, such willing is distress. On the part of the things pursued oravoided, in every case just as a man’s willing is attracted or repelled, sotoo it changes and turns into different affections.

The Stoics — especially Late Roman Stoics — made much of the mind’s abilityto assent, or to refrain from assenting, to impressions. Augustine wants toturn this thesis against them by arguing that it makes all emotions into formsof (free) assent, or the withholding of it.30 He concludes that “what a man’swilling is like” is what matters. To the Stoic condemnation of all passions,Augustine replies that it all depends: “an upright will is thus a good love, anda perverse will an evil love” (.: recta itaque uoluntas est bonus amor et uoluntasperuersa malus amor ).31 The will’s choice of object determines the moral valueof an emotion; there is nothing objectionable in emotion per se.

Second, what holds for Stoic passions also holds for Stoic ‘goodpassions’,the εÎπαθειαι. In ciu. . Augustine argues from Scriptural and classicalauthority that ordinary people (not only Sages) experience elation, caution,and wishing [ = willing]. He concludes:32

Hence good men and evil men will, are cautious, are elated. To put thepoint another way, good men and evil men desire and fear and delight.But the former do so rightly and the latter wrongly, corresponding to eachas the will is upright or perverse.

Even distress may occur in a good way, as when someone becomes distressed

30 Augustine’s thesis here is even more radical than it appears at first glance. He is notmerely reducing the four basic passions to distinct types of volition, which wouldbe radical enough; his claim is that each is a form of willing, that is, of uoluntas =boÔlhsij (rendered ‘wishing’ above), one of the eÎp�qeiai. This is part and parcelof his claim in . that the latter are not restricted to the wise but common to all,to be taken up shortly.

31 Augustine further reduces the four basic Stoic passions to forms of love (.):Amor ergo inhians habere quod amatur, cupiditas est, id autem habens eoquefruens laetitia; fugiens quod ei aduersatur, timor est, idque si acciderit sentienstristitia est. Proinde mala sunt ista, si malus amor est; bona, si bonus.

32 Augustine, ciu. .: Proinde uolunt cauent gaudent et boni et mali; atque ut ea-dem aliis uerbis enuntiemus, cupiunt timent laetantur et boni et mali; sed illi bene,isti male, sicut hominibus seu recta seu peruersa uoluntas est.


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over his sins and repents of them.33 The moral is clear: there is nothingspecial about the Stoic εÎπ�θειαι. Augustine then poses a rhetorical questionto put the nail in the Stoic coffin:34

Yet since, when these affections are exhibited where they are appropriate,they are in accordance with right reason, who would then dare to declarethat the passions are diseases, or full of vice?

The passions are “appropriate” and “in accordance with right reason” andtherefore are not “diseases” — Stoic terminology used against the Stoics. Au-gustine then rehearses a long list of “appropriate” emotions: fear of God,distress at one’s sins, and so on.

Yet despite Augustine’s complete rejection of Stoicism, he tries to retaintheir notion of dispassionate passions. After rehearsing his list of proper emo-tional responses, he then offers an unexpected observation:35

Well, it has to be admitted that the affections we have, even when uprightand in accordance with God, belong to this life, not to the one we hopefor in the future, and that we often give in to them unwillingly.

This admission is meant to call to mind Augustine’s earlier discussion of theissue:36

We can still properly raise the question whether affections of this sort, felteven while doing good works, belong to the weakness characteristic ofour present life. Well, the holy angels should punish without anger thosewhom they receive to be punished by God’s eternal law; they should min-ister to the sorrowful without any shared feeling of sorrow; they should

33 In ciu. . Augustine cites the story of Alcibiades from Cicero, tusc. ... For asense of just how radical Augustine’s claim is, see J. Wetzel, Augustine and the Limitsof Virtue (Cambridge University Press ) –.

34 Augustine, ciu. .: Sed cum rectam rationem sequantur istae affectiones, quandoubi oportet adhibentur, quis eas tunc morbos seu uitiosas passiones audeat dicere?

35 Augustine, ciu. .: Proinde, quod fatendum est, etiam cum rectas et secundumDeum habemus has affectiones, huius uitae sunt, non illius, quam futuram spera-mus, et saepe illis etiam inuiti cedimus.

36 Augustine, ciu. .: Sed adhuc merito quaeri potest, utrum ad uitae praesentis per-tineat infirmitatem etiam in quibusque bonis officiis huiusce modi perpeti affectus,sancti uero angeli et sine ira puniant, quos accipiunt aeterna Dei lege puniendos, etmiseris sine miseriae compassione subueniant, et periclitantibus eis, quos diligunt,sine timore opitulentur; et tamen istarum nomina passionum consuetudine locu-tionis humanae etiam in eos usurpentur propter quandam operum similitudinem,non propter affectionum infirmitatem, sicut ipse Deus secundum scripturas irasc-itur, nec tamen ulla passione turbatur. Hoc enim uerbum uindictae usurpauit ef-fectus, non illius turbulentus affectus. — Augustine makes much the same point inen. Ps. . and ciu. ..


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aid without fear those whom they love when the latter are in danger. Yetthe names of those passions are taken over from ordinary human usagefor them as well, not due to the weakness of the passions, but due to a cer-tain likeness in the deeds. Likewise, God Himself is angered, accordingto Scripture, yet He is not disturbed by any passion; this word is takenover from the effects of His vengeance, not His turbulent affections.

So much for the evidence from ordinary usage Augustine appealed to earlier,we might say, but his point could hardly be more clear: God and His angelsact dispassionately, unmoved by any emotions; even morally appropriateemotions have no place in Heaven.37 This is the Stoic ideal of passionlessnessreborn with a vengeance.38

Augustine recognizes this explicitly: “Accordingly, if �π�θεια is under-stood. . . as a life without the affections that arise contrary to reason and upsetthe mind, it is clearly good and highly desireable, but it does not belong tothis life.”39 It seems that heavenly bliss is Stoic passionlessness, in whichwe are free from all emotions — even from morally praiseworthy emotions.This gets half the equation, the blessed life being dispassionate, but it seemsto recommend mere insensitivity (to which we attribute emotional states onanalogy with our own).

However, Augustine leaves himself a loophole. Notice that he declares�π�θεια worthwhile if it frees the mind not from all emotions, but from thosethat are “contrary to reason and upset the mind.” Similarly, the emotionshe rules out of Heaven are the sorts of emotions we experience in this life.But there are other ‘passions’ that are unlike those we experience in this life,reserved for the blessed; they are Augustine’s own εÎπ�θειαι. He describesit thus:40

37 The Afterlife is not symmetric: sinners and devils feel passions deeply in Hell(ciu. .).

38 In his early writings, Augustine talks about �p�qeia using the Latin term tranquil-itas, as for instance ord. .. and .., as well as acad. ... M. Colish, TheStoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill ) –maintains that Augustine abandoned the ideal of passionlessness after this earlyperiod. I disagree, as will be evident shortly.

39 Augustine, ciu. .: Quocirca illa, quae �p�qeia Graece dicitur (quae si Latineposset impassibilitas diceretur), si ita intellegenda est (in animo quippe, non incorpore accipitur), ut sine his affectionibus uiuatur, quae contra rationem acciduntmentemque perturbant, bona plane et maxime optanda est, sed nec ipsa huius estuitae. — In serm. . Augustine declares that only saints can reach �p�qeia, andnot in this life.

40 Augustine, ciu. .: Potest ergo non absurde dici perfectam beatitudinem sinestimulo timoris et sine ulla tristitia futuram; non ibi autem futurum amorem gaudi-


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Therefore, it can be said, not absurdly, that complete blessedness will bewithout any pang of fear and without any grief; but who would claimthat there will not be love and elation there, except someone wholly shutaway from truth?

The difference between blessed love and elation on the one hand, and ordi-nary love and elation (which Augustine has said is open to ordinary mortals),seems to be largely a difference in their objects:41

For where there is the unchangeable love of the good that has been ob-tained, surely the fear of an evil to be avoided is carefree (if it can beso called). By ‘clean fear’42 is signified the will by which it shall be nec-essary that we will against sinning: not by anxiety over weakness, lestperhaps we sin, but to avoid sin by the tranquillity of love. . . Further-more, a blessed and eternal [life] will have love and elation that are notonly upright but also assured, and no fear or distress.

The good that has been reached in Heaven is, of course, God; love for God,Who is eternal and unchangeable, is itself thereby eternal and unchangeable— a constant theme in Augustine’s writings. In Heaven there is no fear, strictlyspeaking; it would have to be ‘carefree’ and ‘clean’, involving no anxiousness.In short, it would not be fear at all. Instead, it would be an attitude based on‘tranquillity’, Augustine’s earlier preferred rendering of �π�θεια. The ordi-nary passions of love and elation are transformed by their eternal certainty,and take the well-deserved place of temporal cares and worries, includingbeneficial emotions such as the fear of the Lord.

For Augustine, a final question remains. Are the ordinary passions naturalto human beings? Or as he puts it, did Adam and Eve, in their prelapsariancondition, experience delight, distress, fear, and desire? Augustine exploresthis question at tedious length in ciu. .–, but his results can be summa-rized briefly. Fear and distress are not part of sinless human nature, whichis presumably how they can be absent from us in Heaven (.); it is withOriginal Sin that humans became “disturbed by conflicting and fluctuatingaffections” (.), and in particular by the two uncontrollable emotions of

umque quis dixerit, nisi omni modo a ueritate seclusus?41 Ibidem.: Ubi enim boni adepti amor inmutabilis est, profecto, si dici potest, mali

cauendi timor securus est. Timoris quippe casti nomine ea uoluntas significataest, qua nos necesse erit nolle peccare, et non sollicitudine infirmitatis, ne fortepeccemus, sed tranquillitate caritatis cauere peccatum. . . Beata uero eademqueaeterna amorem habebit et gaudium non solum rectum, uerum etiam certum;timorem autem ac dolorem nullum.

42 A reference to ps. :, where Augustine has castus for the Vulgate’s sanctus.


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anger and lust (.),43 which operate largely independent of our will. Inour prelapsarian state even these were under conscious control, so that sexualarousal, for instance, did not involve strong feelings, any more than farmersseeding their crops would (.). Blessedness will consist in a restoration ofour sinless state and thus freedom from the unruly emotions to which we arenow subject.

Take stock. Augustine rejects the Stoic account of the passions, but heretains their ideal of a state in which there are only dispassionate passions.But are there? Augustine maintains that (a) in Heaven there are no disorderlypassions; (b) in Heaven there are emotional states unattainable in this life; (c )elation and love as found in Heaven are qualitatively different from elationand love in this life, due to the assured eternality of their object. From (a)we may infer that heavenly elation and heavenly love are not tumultuous,and from (c ) that the assured eternality of their object makes them settled andtranquil rather than tumultuous as they are in this life. This conclusion, too,is authentically Augustinian: throughout his works he aligns emotional tur-moil with the lack of a constant and reliable object. When in his youth anunnamed close friend died unexpectedly, Augustine describes how upset hewas and concludes that the problem was in loving mortal, and hence transi-tory, things (conf. ..–..). The shock of loss, the anxiety over keepingpossession of a good that can be lost against one’s will, the successive attach-ments to different objects — all these make up the tumultuousness of ordinaryemotional life. Augustine insists that the presence of an assured eternal lovingrelationship would in fact transform the emotions into something that is calmand settled, or, in a word, dispassionate; he is arguably correct.

We might of course reject Augustine’s thesis that the only cure for desire issomething eternal. If we do reject it, the possibility of mundane blessedness,or of emotional turmoil even in Heaven, become live possibilities. Yet evenif we accept his thesis, it is unclear how ‘dispassionate’ heavenly love andelation are. For Augustine wants them to do the job of explicating the rewardof the Beatific Vision, to justify suffering in this life, and to make Heaven aplausible ethical ideal. He can’t easily do that if the saints are never morethan quietly pleased about their lot in the afterlife.

Assessing the degree to which Augustine is successful in forging a theoryof dispassionate passions isn’t easy, since he does not usually give preciseaccounts or technical details. Whether we find it philosophically adequate ornot — I for one would like a lot more detail first — Augustine was taken to

43 Augustine takes these two passions, anger (ira) and lust (libido or concupiscentia) tobe paradigmatic of two parts of the soul distinct from and often opposed to reason,in good Platonic fashion (ciu. .).


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be authoritative on these points in the Middle Ages. No need to engage theStoic arguments; Augustine has disposed of them. And it became a part ofChristian dogma that human nature, prior to Original Sin, is free of desireand fear; that in Heaven there are dispassionate passions, which, even moreparadoxically than anything the Stoics came up with, are passionately feltthere; that human emotions have to be situated between love and will. Suchwas Augustine’s legacy.

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The Augustinian view of dispassionate passions is part of the philosophi-cal/theological inheritance of the Middle Ages. As such, it is assumed moreoften than argued for, and generally treated as one of the many backgroundtruths that helped define the mediæval intellectual landscape. But that land-scape underwent a seismic shift with the recovery and gradual assimilationof Aristotle; old wine had to be poured into new bottles, including the Au-gustinian heritage. Thomas Aquinas is one of the few who directly addressdispassionate passions, trying to fit Augustine’s conclusions into his adoptedAristotelian framework.

Begin with Aquinas’s general account of the passions. Once he has estab-lished that there are passions in the soul, the first order of business to whichAquinas turns is whether the passions are appetitive or cognitive (uer. .and sum. theol. aæ .). Citing Augustine’s remarks in ciu. . as prece-dent, Aquinas argues that the passions can only motivate action — as theyunquestionably do — if representations of their objects occur in a context inwhich they move the agent (as in the appetite) rather than one in which suchrepresentations are merely assessed for their informational content (as in cog-nition). Hence the passions belong to the appetitive part of the soul.

Given the division between parts of the soul, Aquinas’s conclusion aboutdispassionate passions is foregone. But in the course of replying to an ob-jection, he offers a radical departure from Augustine and the Stoics. Thereare two ways in which bodily organs used by the soul may undergo change(sum. theol. a .): immaterially, when it receives the representation (inten-tio) of the object in the organ, and materially, when the organ itself undergoesa physical change. In visual perception the immaterial reception of the rep-resentation is essential, whereas any change in the eye is merely incidental(the eye does not itself become coloured). Matters are different with the pas-sions:44

44 Aquinas, sum. theol. aæ . ad : Sed ad actum appetitus sensitiui per se or-dinatur huiusmodi transmutatio: unde in definitione motuum appetitiuae partis


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The actualization of the sensitive appetite is essentially an instance of thesecond sort of change. Accordingly, in the definition of the movements ofthe appetitive part, some natural change in an organ is materially given.Anger, for example, is said to be the boiling of blood around the heart.

For Aquinas, the somatic manifestations of a passion are an essential part ofthe passion. Or, to put the point another way, only an embodied personcan have emotions. This contrasts sharply with Augustine, who was carefulto insist in his discussion of the passions that he was concerned with themprimarily as mental events.45 The Stoics were committed to thinking thatall psychological events have material explanations in the end, but they areclear that the Zenonian psychological states of expansion, contraction, andso on, are not essentially somatic but rather mental. Aquinas breaks withtradition in holding that both immaterial and material changes are essentialto the passions.

Aquinas begs the question, though. His claims are directed to the sensitiveappetite, but at this point he has argued only that the passions belong to theappetitive part of the soul; whether they belong to intellective or sensitiveappetite has not yet been settled, and it is in fact the next question he takesup (sum. theol. aæ .). Passions do have a somatic component, but for allwe yet know this could be no more than a contingent causal effect of theirbeing an intellective appetite; Aquinas owes us an argument for his radicalconclusion, but we do not get one. If anything, he makes matters worse byrelying on his question-begging reply to argue that the passions belong to thesensitive appetite:46

As we have remarked, a passion is strictly found where there is a physi-ological change. This is found in actualizations of the sensitive appetite:it is not only immaterial, as it is in the case of sensitive apprehension, butalso natural. Yet in actualizations of the intellective appetite a physiolog-

materialiter ponitur aliqua naturalis transmutation organi: sicut dicitur, quod iraest accensio sanguinis circa cor [De an. . b].

45 The burden of ciu. . is to establish that the Platonists are mistaken in thinkingthat emotions are due solely to the soul’s entanglement with the body; part ofAugustine’s argument is that the four basic types of passion are not intrinsicallyconnected to the body, and can be experienced purely as mental phenomena.

46 Aquinas, sum. theol. aæ .: Dicendum quod, sicut iam dictum est, passio pro-prie inuenitur ubi est transmutatio corporalis. Quae quidem inuenitur in actibusappetitus sensitiui; et non solum spiritualis, sicut est in apprehensione sensitiua,sed etiam naturalis. In actu autem appetitus intellectiui non requiritur aliqua trans-mutatio corporalis, quia huiusmodi appetitus non est uirtus alicuius organi. Undepatet quod ratio passionis magis proprie inuenitur in actu appetitus sensitiui quamintellectiui.


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ical change is not required, since this kind of appetite is not the facultyassociated with an organ. Accordingly, it is clear that the passions aremore strictly found in the actualization of the sensitive, rather than theintellective, appetite.

Why are the passions not phenomena of intellective appetite, that is, of thewill? Aquinas’s reply boils down to the claim that the passions necessarilyinvolve somatic changes. That is to travel in a small circle indeed; no wonderhis reasoning was challenged in short order.47

Aquinas does not hesitate to draw the consequences of his view, question-begging or not. If the passions are restricted to the sensitive appetite, thenthey can only exist in beings that have sensitive appetite, namely animals andhuman beings. By the same token, there can be no passions in beings thatlack sensitive appetite: God, angels, and discorporate human souls. There isno mistaking Aquinas’s clear language. Passions are essentially physiologicalphenomena, and thus are not possible for bodiless beings.48 Indeed, Aquinasexplicitly declares that when a human being dies, the hope or the fear hemay have had regarding his postmortem existence do not remain in his soul,dependent as the passions are upon the body (uer. . ad and . ad ).Given the strict separation of psychological faculties and the requirement thatpassions have a somatic component, there seems little prospect for dispas-sionate passions. In particular, Aquinas cannot adopt Augustine’s strategy offinding a pure delight that is qualitatively transformed in Heaven by dint ofbeing directed to an eternal object. There are no grounds in Aquinas for anykind of delight, or other passion, in a bodiless state, no matter the object orthe surrounding circumstances. Yet Aquinas is just as committed as Augustine— in no small measure because of Augustine — to heavenly happiness and toGod’s love for all of creation. These must be dispassionate; the question ishow they can be ‘passionate’ at all.

Aquinas’s strategy is to identify something that is analogous to the pas-sions which can be attributed to bodiless beings, a line he finds support for in

47 For example, when Duns Scotus takes up in his ord. d. q. the questionwhether moral virtues have their seat in the will, he recites Aquinas’s argumentthat they do not, because they regulate the passions which are restricted to thesensitive appetite (n. ), and replies that there are passions in the will strictlyspeaking (nn. –) — citing Augustine’s reduction of the four basic passions tothe will in ciu. . (described above) as support. There is a parallel discussion inScotus’s Reportatio, in which Scotus declares that the will is prone to “take delightalong with” (condelectandum) the sensitive appetite.

48 See, for instance, uer. . and .; sum. theol. a . ad , . ad , .;sum. theol. aæ . ad , . ad ; c. gent. .. There are many other passagesto the same effect.


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Augustine’s remarks in ciu. . about how we attribute emotions to God andangels based on “a certain likeness” in the deeds they perform (cited above).While Augustine’s intent was deflationary, meant to explain how God and an-gels do not really have passions, Aquinas draws instead the moral that thereis a likeness between the passions and something in God and angels that li-censes talk of ‘passions’ in their case.

Now Aquinas holds that cognitive and affective psychology differ in virtueof their distinct primary objects: the former is concerned with the true, whilethe latter is concerned with the good (sum. theol. a . ad ).49 This inten-sional difference reflects the fact that on the one hand the cognitive powersassimilate and process information, while on the other hand the appetitivepowers move the agent — toward the good and away from evil, whether atthe level of sensitive appetite (the passions) as passive powers, or at the levelof intellective appetite (the will) as an active power. This ‘motive’ aspect iswhat characterizes affective psychology generally, making it a distinct branchof inquiry apart from cognitive psychology. When he wants to speak of anaction of the appetitive power generally, Aquinas uses the term ‘affection’ (af-fectio).50 Passions and volitions are equally affections, since they are appetitiveacts that move their subject to action. Some volitions might therefore be anal-ogous to passions. This is in fact the line of thought Aquinas pursues: “whenlove or elation or the like are attributed to God or angels, or even to humanbeings with respect to the intellective appetite, they signify a simple act of thewill with similar effects but free of passion.”51 The dispassionate analogue topassion, then, is a simple act of the will.

The faculty of intellective appetite, the will, is not in general similar tothe sensitive appetite, domain of the passions. For one thing, it is not dividedinto concupiscible and irascible parts — the burden of sum. theol. aæ ...The will is a single psychological faculty. Like its cognitive counterpart, the

49 See P. King, “The Inner Cathedral” in Vivarium (), –, for Aquinas’saccount of the distinction between cognitive and affective psychology (especially§).

50 See R. Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions (Cambridge University Press ),– for Aquinas’s use of affectio and §. for the sense in which affections havemotive power.

51 Aquinas, sum. theol. aæ . ad : Amor et gaudium et alia huiusmodi, cumattribuuntur Deo uel angelis, aut hominibus secundum appetitum intellectiuum,significant simplicem actum uoluntatis cum similitudine effectus, absque passione.— The same suggestion is offered in sum. theol. aæ ., where Aquinas describespleasure occurring in the intellective appetite as “a simple act of will” and declares(ad ) that it is not a passion strictly speaking, but is rather a simple movement(simplex motum), ”just as it is in the case of God and angels.”


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intellect, the will is not essentially bound to the physiology of its subject. It cantherefore be possessed by bodiless beings, and, like the intellect, is retainedby the human soul even when the soul becomes separated from the body.Unlike the sensitive appetite, however, the will is an active potency. It is theintellective principle of motion in the agent, directed to the good in generalas its object, and its particular acts are volitions, each of which ‘moves’ theagent in some way.

At a minimum, simple acts of will are analogous to passions in that theyare principles of movement within the agent, that is, in that each is an affec-tion. But that seems too thin a basis to claim any genuine similarity betweenpassions and (simple) volitions. At the least, Aquinas owes us an account ofwhich volitions are properly analogous to the passions. He admits as muchwhen discussing what affections are present in the postmortem human soul:“Elation and fear, which are passions, do not remain in the separated soul,since they are involved with physiological change; but there do remain actsof the will that are similar to these passions” (uer. . ad ).52 But what is itfor an act of will to be ‘similar’ to the passion of fear (say)? Aquinas proposesthe following account:53

Love, desire, and so on are taken in two ways: (a) in that they are certainpassions, that is, occurring along with somemental commotion, and takengenerally in this way they exist only in the sensitive appetite; (b) theysignify a simple affection free of passion or mental commotion, and inthis way they are acts of the will, and also are attributed to angels and toGod.

These affections, act of will that are not associated with “mental commotion”(animi concitatio), are not passions by definition. They are dispassionate pas-sions, the volitional correlate to passions — call them ‘pseudopassions’.54

Were Aquinas to leave matters at that, his notion of dispassionate passionswould hardly be compelling; it is not very enlightening to be told that dispas-sionate fear is just like passionate fear except that it is an act of will which does

52 See also uer. . ad .53 Aquinas, sum. theol. a . ad : Dicendum est quod amor, concupiscentia, et

huiusmodi dupliciter accipiuntur. Quandoque quidem secundum quod sunt quae-dam passiones, cum quadam scilicet concitatione animi provenientes. Et sic com-muniter accipiuntur, et hoc modo sunt solum in appetitu sensitiuo. Alio modosignificant simplicem affectum, absque passione vel animi concitatione. Et sic suntactus uoluntatis. Et hoc etiam modo attribuuntur angelis et Deo.

54 See the discussions in P. King, “Aquinas on the Passions” in S. MacDonald andE. Stump (eds.), Aquinas’s Moral Theory – (Ithaca NY: Cornell UniversityPress ); R. Miner, Aquinas on the Passions §..


. THOMAS AQUINAS

not involve mental commotion. How is fear a choice, or at least relevantlylike a choice? What is fear if there is no commotion, turmoil, upset? Fortu-nately, Aquinas does not leave matters at that. His considered response hasthree parts: an account of how dispassionate passions are possible; the groundon which they are legitimately the analogues to passions; and the grounds forattributing them to various bodiless beings.

In sum. theol. a ..Aquinas takes up the question whether there is lovein God. In replying to and objection, Aquinas points out that “in the passionsof the sensitive appetite there may be distinguished something quasi-material,namely the physiological change, and something quasi-formal, which is onthe side of the appetite” (ad ). Anger, for instance, involves blood boilingaround the heart as its material element, and the desire for revenge (appeti-tus uindictae) as its formal element; each is essential to the nature of fear quapassion. In the case of dispassionate passions the material element is left out,of course. It is rather the formal element that provides the ground for theanalogous dispassionate passion. Very roughly, in the analogue to a passion,the will adopts the object of the passion. So, for example, Aquinas argues thatGod experiences elation (c. gent. .) and love (c. gent. .), in their dispas-sionate form, expanding on his earlier abbreviated reference to “simple actsof the will”:55

Now the operations of the appetite are classified into kinds according totheir objects. Hence in the intellective appetite, the will, we find oper-ations that are similar in respect of their kind to the operations of thesensitive appetite; but they differ in that they are passions in the sensitiveappetite, due to its connection with a bodily organ, whereas in the intel-lective appetite they are simple operations. For just as someone avoids afuture evil through the passion of fear, which is in the sensitive appetite,so too the intellective appetite does the same thing but without passion.

The volitional analogue to love is targeted at the same object as passionatelove, “without passion” (and certainly without a somatic component). Butwhat is love without passion? It is “to wish another well” (uelle bonum alium)in a simple act of the will (sum. theol. a . ad ), such as God or angels

55 Aquinas, c. gent. .: Sed operationes appetitus speciem ex obiectis sortiuntur.Inueniuntur igitur in appetitu intellectiuo, qui est uoluntas, similes operationes se-cundum rationem speciei operationibus appetitus sensitiui, in hoc differentes quodin appetitu sensitiuo sunt passiones, propter coniuncionem eius ad organum cor-porale, in intellectiuo autem sunt operationes simplices: sicut enim per passionemtimoris, quae est in appetitu sensitiuo, refugit quis malum futurum, ita sine pas-sione intellectiuus appetitus idem operatur. — N. Kretzmann, The Metaphysics ofTheism (Oxford University Press ) – has an insightful discussion of thispassage, and of ‘dispassionate passions’ generally.


. THOMAS AQUINAS

might have. So too for the pseudopassion of elation, which is a simple actof the will reposing (quiescere) in some possessed good, a point he reiteratesin c. gent. .. By contrast, the pseudopassion of distress is experienced bydemons or the damned as a simple act of “the will’s resistance (renisus uolun-tatis) to what is or to what is not” (sum. theol. a .).56 The basis for callingpseudopassions similar to passions is thus twofold. On the one hand, like anyaffection, passions and pseudopassions are principles of movement within theagent. On the other hand, they share the same object, although that objectis the target of different faculties. Hence these pseudopassions are genuinelyanalogous to the passions, while systematically differing from them.57 Hu-man beings are perfectly capable of having dispassionate passions in this life,since they are simple acts of will, alongside ordinary passions; it is only af-ter death, in the absence of the body, that human souls are limited to thepseudopassions.

As the example of distress suggests, Aquinas, unlike Augustine or the Sto-ics, holds that all passions have dispassionate analogues. The whole panoplyof the passions found in the sensitive appetite is replicated at the level of theintellective appetite. This means that Aquinas has to find some way to dif-ferentiate between dispassionate passions that can occur in God or angels,and those that cannot but may occur in us. He sketches his account brieflyin sum. theol. a . ad , and presents it at greater length in c. gent. .,where he takes up the question whether there are affective passions (passionesaffectuum) in God. As we should expect, Aquinas is careful to note that therecannot literally be passions in God, since passions are necessarily accompa-nied by physiological changes, as well as being passive potencies. But nowAquinas draws a distinction. Some passions must be absent from God notonly because of the kind of thing they are, namely physiological, but because

56 Aquinas devotes uer. . to the question how a separated human soul can be saidto suffer, and in particular how the damned suffer in Hell if they have no bodies.The solution he finds most plausible, though as a matter of faith rather than proof,is that discorporate human souls are (unnaturally) united to physical fire as theirsubstantial form, and so are imbued with its heat. It is not clear that the sameview can be applied to fallen angels, though; human souls are fit by nature to bethe substantial form of an associated body, though not the fire to which they arejoined, whereas the fallen angels, like all angels, are purely immaterial beings.

57 To the best of my knowledge Aquinas does not use the term ‘analogy’ in any ofhis discussions of dispassionate passions. His technical theory of analogy seemsquite well-suited to clarify and illuminate his account, however, despite his avoid-ance of its terminology. The precise details of Aquinas’s theory of analogy havebeen a matter of controversy since the Middle Ages. For a recent account, seeR. McInerny, Aquinas and Analogy (Catholic University of America ).


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their objects are unsuitable. Distress, for example, by its very nature cannotbe present in God, since it is directed at an evil that one possesses — but Godcannot have evil present in Himself in any form.58 Similar reasoning appliesto hope (spes): the eventual transformation of Stoic βοÔλησι is inappropriatefor God, since there is no good that He lacks. Likewise for desire, fear, andanger. But the Augustinian εÎπ�θειαι, elation and love, are not ruled out bytheir objects or by the relation in which the subject stands to their objects. AsAquinas remarks, these pseudopassions “can be properly predicated of Godthough without attributing passion to Him” (sum. theol. a . ad ). Other at-tributions of passions to God, even analogously, are improper or in some waymetaphorical, as when God is described as angry (not literally or analogouslypossible but so-called in light of the effects of His actions: sum. theol. a .ad ). The upshot is that, as Aquinas puts it, human beings have elationin common with brute animals and with angels (sum. theol. aæ . ad ).Even more: elation in its ‘intellectual’ (dispassionate) form is more intenseand far greater than any mere bodily pleasure, as Aquinas goes on to argue(sum. theol. aæ .).

Aquinas takes his account of dispassionate passions to improve on the Sto-ics (sum. theol. aæ .). While arguing for Aristotelian moderation, ratherthan Stoic extirpation, of the passions, Aquinas approvingly cites Augus-tine’s view that the Stoics differ only verbally from Aristotle, as can be seenfrom their endorsement of dispassionate passions. Proof that the differenceis merely verbal is found in calling only inordinate affections ‘passions’: thenAristotle also holds that they are not to be found in the virtuous person. TheStoics, Aquinas charges, failed to distinguish the passions from other humanaffections, and so conflated pseudopassions with passions, not keeping thesensitive appetite distinct from the intellective appetite.

While Aquinas’s criticism has some justice to it, his own account of dis-passionate passions might fall victim to a similar charge of verbal trickery. It isall well and good for Aquinas to claim that the human experience of elation iscommon to animals and to angels, but strictly speaking his claim is false, sinceit equivocally conflates passions with pseudopassions: humans have passions(acts of the sensitive appetite) literally in common with other animals, and hu-mans may also have pseudopassions (acts of the intellective appetite) literallyin common with angels, but the two kinds of acts are distinct, even if they areanalogous to one another. We could as well say that the human experience

58 Aquinas, c. gent. .: Quaedam autem passiones remouentura Deo non solum ra-tione sui generis, sed etiam ratione speciei. Omnis enim passio ex obiecto speciemrecipit. Cuius igitur obiectum omnino est Deo incompetens, talis passio a Deo re-mouetur etiam secumdum rationem propriae speciei.


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of cognition is ‘common’ to animals and angels, on the grounds that humanbeings have sense-perception (like animals) and also reasoning (like angels).

Philosophical doubts raised about the accounts of dispassionate passionsoffered by the Stoics and Augustine had to do with whether the approvedemotions, the Stoic or Augustinian εÎπ�θειαι, were properly dispassionate.For Aquinas the difficulty is rather in seeing how the pseudopassions are emo-tions at all, rather than merely being volitional directives to the same endsto which the passions move us. Consider his prized dispassionate passions,namely elation and love. Elation, Aquinas declares, is a matter of “the will’sresting in its object” (c. gent. .: quaedam quietatio uoluntatis in suo uolito).There is, arguably, an appropriate intellective attitude to have toward a goodin one’s possession — not an occurrent feeling, but more like the satisfactionone might take in a job well done. It is even harder to map out a volitionalequivalent to love. We might see it as an extension of the intellective attitudeof benevolence, that is, of wishing another well for his or her own sake; moredifficult is to understand the unifying and binding aspects of love on a purevolitional level (c. gent. .).59 The difficulty is whether such intellectualizedvolitional responses should count as emotions. They seem to leave out thefeeling that is essential to emotion. A well-programmed android could like-wise evaluate situations are likely to cause damage and therefore take actionto avoid them without having any feelings about it. We can recognize that theandroid evaluates and responds to its circumstances in an appropriate way,but then, so does a well-designed thermostat. The philosophical question atissue here is whether Aquinas’s pseudopassions have enough of the featureswe might associate with emotions to be deserving of the name in their ownright. Clearly Aquinas’s pseudopassions provide their subject with motiva-tional force, though of a different character and order from that provided bythe passions — namely to motivate dispassionately — and hence are analogousto the passions in being affections, in Aquinas’s technical sense. But this maynot be enough. At best, we might think, Aquinas can only offer a pale voli-tional counterfeit of the real thing. No matter how he tries to disguise the fact,holding the view that it would be a good thing for Adam to prosper seems afar cry from loving Adam.60 Yet Aquinas is committed not only to this, but

59 See Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Theism –, for an analysis of Aquinas’saccount of God’s love.

60 Aquinas may have a loophole. The conclusions of the Summa theologiae and theSumma contra gentiles include only results established by natural reason. Therefore,Aquinas could maintain that the supernal delights of Heaven are a matter of faithrather than reason, and this might be true even if to us it seems simply impossible.It need not be any more impossible or contrary to reason than the doctrine of


CONCLUSION

to the further claim that his immaterial pseudopassions are better than theirmaterial counterparts. It is hard to see why we should think so. Intellectualbenevolence is a fine thing, but hardly to be confounded with passionate love,and no match for the latter’s intensity.

CONCLUSION

We have now seen what two mediæval philosophers have done with theparadoxical notion of ‘dispassionate passions’ inherited from the Stoics. Ineach case the results are mixed, as indeed they are in the case of the Sto-ics themselves; none of the three accounts examined here is philosophicallysatisfying. That may be no more than the best a paradoxical doctrine canhope for. The alternative is to give up the paradox entirely. This road wastaken by a distinct tradition stemming from Augustine, one that starts withthe notion Aquinas has so arduously laboured to devise: the ‘affections ofthe will’.61 Anselm of Canterbury picks up on Augustine’s claim that thepassions are all forms of willing, and, in his De casu Diaboli, postulates twofundamental affections: (a) willing justice; (b) willing advantage. These arenot two distinct faculties in each agent, but two orientations or directions inwhich the agent’s single faculty of will is pulled; indeed, it is constitutive ofindividual moral agency. Anselm himself does not try to align (a)–(b) withthe passions of the soul, but as his work came to be read during the periodof High Scholasticism, particularly by Franciscan philosophers, there cameto be a distinct ‘augustinian’ strain in the philosophy of psychology in whichthe passions were not narrowly confined to the sensitive appetite, as Aquinaswould have it, but are themselves ways of willing — that is, affections of thewill. Scotus and Ockham, for example, talk about (ordinary) passions as be-ing in the will: not in Aquinas’s pickwickian sense, but such that anger (say)has a physiological and a volitional component. To take this approach, how-ever, is to discard the need for dispassionate passions. The passions can beonly materially and accidentally connected with their somatic manifestations,and be capable of existing in full-blooded form as passions in the intellectiveappetite alone. Spelling out how this is possible is not easy; it is very close toAquinas’s task of constructing volitional counterparts of the sensitive passions.But with a difference, for on this alternate ‘anselmian’ approach there can be

the Trinity. The rapturous delights of Heaven are part of revealed theology, notnatural theology.

61 For a further discussion of this tradition, as well as an attempt to summarize theseveral trends of thought about the emotions in the course of the Middle Ages, seeP. King, “Emotions in Medieval Thought” in P. Goldie (ed.), The Oxford Handbookof Philosophy of Emotion – (Oxford: Oxford University Press ).


CONCLUSION

phenomenal qualities associated with acts of volition, and these feelings (themediæval reinvention of Zenonian psychological states) might provide thejoy in heavenly joyfulness.

For all that, this anselmian tradition could not avoid the doctrine of dis-passionate passions, with its paradoxical character. For after Augustine thedoctrine passed into the framework of Christian thought, becoming standardand part of the intellectual furniture of the untidy warehouse that was themediæval mind. Aquinas’s attempt to underwrite the doctrine, however suc-cessful we might find it, certainlly added further legitimacy to dispassionatepassions. How the doctrine passed from its unlicensed ubiquity in the Mid-dle Ages into early modern philosophy, if indeed that is the route the ideatraveled on its way to Spinoza and others, remains to be explored.

Peter King • University of Toronto


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Dispassionate Passions